Hey guys!

2014 has been a pretty awesome year for me, with some breakthrough live scores and some steady progress online. But there is still plenty of room for improvement, and thats what's gonna happen in 2015.

I've spent a lot of this year still learning, and its been a steep learning curve from the 2004 poker I was still playing in 2013 but we're making good progress.

So whats the plan for 2015? Part of me feels that this may be the last chance to prove I can make a living doing this. I'm 32 now, married for 4 years but other than a mortgage and a puppy, very few commitments. At some stage in the future I may not have the freedom to play as much as I'd like, so now is the time to make hay! In order to give myself the best chance possible, I need to do some things better than I have before:

First off, bank roll management. This year the main focus will be to manage my roll properly. Since I stated playing regularly again I have tended to make the mistake of getting a decent score and then moving up in stakes and that is where my downswings have been worst and have hurt.

Secondly, study. I get so much from studying the game through vids on this site, books, podcasts hand history reviews and anything else I can get my hands on. The problem is I don't do it often enough. I'm going to make sure i put at least 1 day a week aside for reviewing my game and doing other HH reviews as well – (if anyone wants to swap HH's, look at eachothers games etc, i'd be happy to do so).

Third, volume. I need to work on increasing my volume and becoming more comfortable playing more tables. Currently I struggle once I get around 10 tables on the go, I want to gradually increase this so I can play more tourneys in a session. Additionally, I need to stop being a buy in/prize pool snob. I feel like I avoid some tourneys on stars at the moment because the buy in is low and so is the prize pool. I need to start looking at these tourneys as an opporunity to continue to build my roll, not as a throwaway tourney.

There's lots more that I have in my mind that I want to achieve, but it seems very results orientated.

I want to improve my P5's ranking (I'm currently #2 in my local area, #7 in my city and #672/3128 in the UK). I don't really have a figure in mind for the UK ranking, but I'm aiming at #1 for the other 2. It'd be nice to improve on my GPI/HendonMob after getting my first entries this year (…..8;n=335703).

I'm going to do a blog for the year in an effort to be accountable for my results and how I'm doing, writing also helps me mentally so hopefully it will keep me in a good mind set, I'll also try and keep this thread updated with some progress reports through the year. I bought some recording/editing software in the sales, so maybe I'll do a few vids as well if I feel brave enough!

Hopefully I can continue the progress into next year, and with the help of this site, and a lot of great members (especially the guys who are always loitering in the chat room – Nervous Mike, Showbiz Tom, EMB et al) I'm sure it'll be all I hope for and more. I'm excited for the ball to drop so we can get the 2015 show on the road, I hope you enjoy the journey with me!

Al – Pikey2003